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BCC Minutes 04/20/1999 W (Landfill Workshop) April 20, 1999 TRANSCRIPT OF THE LANDFILL WORKSHOP OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, April 20, 1999 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 7:00 p.m. in SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRWOMAN: Pamela S. Mac'Kie Barbara B. Berry John C. Norris Timothy J. Constantine James D. Carter ALSO PRESENT: Robert Fernandez, County Administrator David Weigel, County Attorney Page 1 NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE Board of County Commissioners Landfill Workshop Date: April 20, 1999 Time: 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM Location: Board of County Commissioners Boardroom 3ra floor of Administration Bldg. 3301 Tamiami Trail E., Naples, FL 34112 This workshop will be televised live on channel 54 This workshop is an educational forum addressing solid waste issues. THIS WORKSHOP WILL NOT INCLUDE A PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD. AGENDA 1. Existing situation 2. Alternatives that will be discussed 3. Sanitary Landfill 4. Waste-to-Energy 5. Composting 6. Recycling 7. Other Technologies-CDM & Dr. CharlesStokes, Sc.D.,P..E. 8. Technology evaluation criteria 9. European and Asian experience 10. Community mitigation measures 11. Summary 12. Existing Landfill April 20, 1999 CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: We'll call to order this workshop of the Board of County Commissioners. It's a landfill workshop. We appreciate the people who are here. The public are going to be educated, as we are tonight. I hope that you have been adequately notified that this is a workshop tonight. But we're going to hear from our staff and get their professional advice and not make decisions and, therefore, this is not a public hearing, and there will not be an opportunity for public comment, because before any decisions are made, a public hearing will be held, at which point there will be the opportunity for public comment. So I just wanted to make that clear right up front, in case you were here and you'd rather watch this meeting from the comfort of your living room. Are you going to get us started, Mr. Ilschner? MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairwoman, Ed Ilschner, for the record, your public works administrator. We apparently have had a little problem here with our technical equipment. We're working on that now and should have it going momentarily. But in the interim, let me try to set the stage for our workshop this evening. Good evening, Madam Chairwoman, Commissioners, members of the audience. Again, for the. record, I am Ed Ilschner, your public works administrator. I'd like to sort of review why we're here this evening. Commissioners, during the last several years, the board has been involved in several activities associated with Solid Waste Management. You've been involved in a lengthy process, designed to locate a site for a new landfill. That site was located, and the process was initiated to acquire that site. On February the 9th, 1999, the board directed staff to pursue the trucking of our waste to a remote landfill site. The staff presented several contract alternatives, and the board concurred with staff's recommendations to reject those trucking alternatives. At that particular meeting, the board directed staff to arrange and conduct a board workshop, designed as an educational forum that would present the board with various solid waste technologies that exist that could be considered by the board as a means of meeting our disposal needs, and also, to bring to the board the associated costs of those particular alternatives. Madam Chairwoman, tonight we are here to present that solid waste workshop to you. And during that workshop, Commissioners, I would like to encourage each of you to ask questions at any point in time that you have them, as we go through the presentation. First of all, I would like to summarize for you how we will conduct the workshop and who will be the presenters this evening. The first part of this workshop this evening will be a brief status report from David Russell, and he'll cover the county's existing landfill activity capacities and rate structures in order to give you a basis for comparison to the information on other technologies that we will present to you this evening. In presenting those technologies, we will be utilizing the services of Camp-Dresser-McKee, known as CDM. They are an engineering consulting firm, specializing in civil engineering and environmental projects. And we're pleased that we have been able to use the services of a gentleman by the name of Mr. Bob Hauser. Mr. Hauser is Page 2 April 20, 1999 a senior vice president with CDM, and he's going to cover the current status of various technologies, including the issues attached to each of those technologies, along with their associated costs, both in the United States and Europe. And Mr. Hauser has over 25 years of experience in Solid Waste Management planning. And he has managed the preparation of over 30 comprehensive solid waste master plans, including extensive investigations into various technologies. We also this evening have with us Dr. Charles Stokes, and Dr. Stokes will present to us his knowledge about fan technology at the appropriate point in the time associated with CDM's portion of the program. And at the conclusion of that presentation by CDM, I would like to discuss briefly how we got here with respect to odor at the existing landfill, and then I would like to call on Mr. Steve Bigelow, our contract manager of the landfill, to discuss with you the solutions that his company has developed to address those odor issues and other operational issues at the existing landfill. And then I will conclude the program with a presentation on my recent trip on -- trip to investigate fan system technology and how I would envision our employing that fan technology at the existing landfill to eliminate odor. And then I would like to summarize for you our understanding, the staff's understanding, of your policy direction with respect to solid waste disposal. And that will conclude our presentation. Are we ready, David? MR. RUSSEL: I think we're about five minutes away here, Ed. MR. ILSCHNER: We're having a few technical difficulties and do need to have the Power Point equipment. It worked great this afternoon. Isn't that always the case -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: That's always the case. MR. ILSCHNER: -- when you really have it down pat and you've worked hard to rehearse it and here you come this evening and it doesn't work. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Should we take a five-minute recess? MR. ILSCHNER: You might want to take a five. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Okay, five minutes, we'll be back. (Recess.) CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Without delay, we're ready. MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairman, I think we have our leading technology equipment ready to go. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: We're back to order, if we could have your attention, and we have the technology ready to go. MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, ma'am, we do. And let me take this opportunity to introduce to you Mr. David Russel. David? MR. RUSSEL: Good evening, Commissioners. I think we should start off, for those viewers at home that may not know where the landfill is located, we'll go over to the visualizer and look at an area map that we have here. And you will see the location of the landfill near the intersection of 1-75 and State Road 51. You'll see it outlined in a box there. Just to give -- I'm sure most of us know where that landfill is located, but there may be some folks out there that may not be aware of that. To give everybody an idea of what the activity at the landfill is at the present time, we're seeing about 720 tons a day going in the Page 3 April 20, 1999 line cell at the rate of growth that we've been experiencing, roughly three percent the past five years. If that continued, we'd see something like 1,200 tons a day in the year 2020. So that kind of tonnage we may be looking at in the future. Another thing we want to do is tell you about the configuration and the capacity at the current landfill. I'll go over to the aerial photo here and point that out. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: On the microphone, if you would, please. MR. RUSSEL: This area -- have we got sound? Is the microphone on? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes. MR. RUSSEL: This is the 312 acres of the current landfill that we showed you on the area map. The entry is here. This is 1-75 here. This Cell 6 area encompasses 80 acres. It is this total area. We started filling from Phase I in the northernmost area first. And Phase I is about the first third. Phase II is the second third. We have Phase III, which is down at ground level. This is the area that we'll be going next probably in another 90 days or so. It's anticipated that this area will be filled by approximately the end of 2004. Now, the next area for the total site capacity would involve filling this area up against this closed cell, 3 and 4. And that would take us to approximately the year 2014. So eventually at 2014 the total site, as it's permitted now and as the height restrictions are given now, would fill out 2014. COMMISSIONER CARTER: If my math is right, that's about 15 years. MR. RUSSEL: That's correct, 15 and a half, 16 years. We have a -- some growth management requirements. The level of service standards for solid waste is to have -- always have two years of cell capacity built in advance. We don't have a problem in that area. And in fact, under our contract with Waste Management, any additional cell construction that is required would be built and paid for by Waste Management as a part of their contract. We will, at the end of 2004, approximately, be right at the point where we would be encroaching on that 10 years total capacity requirement. Now, that's the second level of service standards that we must maintain is to have always a reserve of 10 years of capacity capability. There have been other studies done concerning the potential capacity at the landfill. Burns and McDonnell's study was commissioned by the Friends of Farmers in 1997. And basically what that says, if you change some of the parameters, for instance, if you move the elevation up from 108 feet to 170 feet, if you remove space for materials processing, such as biomass processing and construction demolition processing, and if you were able to change some of the permit requirements, you might possibly be able to get to something on the order of an additional 20 years at the outside, if you can make all those things happen. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just a quick question. Is it even practical to get rid of construction and debris processing? MR. RUSSEL: It would have to be done somewhere. Another thing that's interesting to note, up to this point we've had an average growth rate in our waste treatment of about three percent. However, last year it was interesting to note that the economy is so energetic in this area that the activity was actually increased by seven percent and we're on that same track for 1999. So Page 4 April 20, 1999 increases like this can have some effect on your total capacity, looking down the road. I wouldn't expect it to stay at that high level, but just to let you know, that's where the level is now. COMMISSIONER CARTER: So how much time would that cut off? Let's say that we have a process that goes on for five years at seven percent, does that knock us down two, three, four years? MR. RUSSEL: If we carried that seven percent clear on through, that would knock three years off that 2014 figure. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Which also means if we're going to stay within our own 10-year window, we have to have some decision in the next couple of years. MR. RUSSEL: That's correct. We've got some basic recycling numbers for you here. These are numbers that come from the State of Florida. As you can see, our gross recycling rate is quite high, and that's driven a lot by construction demolition and land clearing activity. The state has an adjusted rate, which actually puts a cap on what credits they'll allow for C and D and biomass processing. So when you get done looking at their formula, Collier County is at 27 percent, which is three percent below the state mandated goal of 30 percent. The percentage varies from year to year by a percentage point or two in the county. Now look at tipping fees in Collier County. You can see our current rate of $26.64 is below the state average of $42.69. Now to take a minute to look at the breakdown of our tipping fee, what components make up that tipping fee, you'll notice that the first item shows the contract costs for disposal. It includes cell construction, cell closure and closure monitoring for 30 years at a cost of $16.46 a ton. That's the contract amount we pay to Waste Management for their activity. And that's paid on a per ton basis, based on what comes over the scales. That particular number is a number to keep in mind as we talk further this evening about different technologies and the cost of those technologies. It's the 16.46 number that you would want to compare to those other technologies, because we have to add the county administration cost and reserve costs on to that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That amount again, 16.467 MR. RUSSEL: Correct. And that increases annually with the consumer price index. How does that tonnage rate figure into the annual assessment that we charge our residential customers? As you can see at the top, this slide, the collection fee that's paid to Waste Management for the curbside collection is $78. The disposal fee portion of the assessment is $32.23. And you'll note that -- you'll see the $26.64 tipping fee. And that's multiplied by the actual generation rate, average generation rate of each residential unit. And that's how you arrive at the 32.23 figure. And all totaled together, that brings us to a total of $110.26. Surveying the 28 most populated counties, the average assessment is a little over 138 -- excuse me, $183. And of course, Collier County ranks very near the lowest in these kinds of assessments. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Where do we put in the C and D tipping fee? Do we have that broken out separately? MR. RUSSEL: That's a separate fee based on the -- all the processing fees are based on the subcontracts for those processing amounts. It's kind of a dollars in, dollars out arrangement. We have Page 5 April 20, 1999 typically lower fees for those activities. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And we do have other counties bringing their C and D materials in here to dump? MR. RUSSEL: Not that we're aware of. Our policy is only to take care of Collier County waste. At any time that we detect that there's waste visiting from other counties, we stop it. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, that's contrary to information I got from Lee County that says they dump 50 tons a year in our landfill, so I'd like clarification on that somewhere. Is that private haulers? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: You got that from? COMMISSIONER CARTER: From their director today. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Gee, that sounds like reliable information. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That would be a ton a week? MR. RUSSEL: A ton a week? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Hopefully that's not accurate. But if 50 tons a year is a ton a week and we're doing 720 tons a day, it's not an amount that has any impact at all. MR. RUSSEL: Our annual activity with C and D is on the order of 70 to 80,000 tons. That I know on the county line, particularly in the Bonita Springs area, where the county line kind of runs right down the Main Street in that area, it's a little bit difficult to sort that out, and that's probably where that's coming from. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I understand we'd prefer to have zero, but just perspective-wise, that's not a huge volume at all. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, I raised that because C and D materials seem to be a problem for us in terms of odor, so -- MR. RUSSEL: That's correct. At this point in the presentation, I'll turn it over to Mr. Hauser to take us through the alternative technologies. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. HAUSER: Good evening, Commissioners. It's a pleasure to be here. To start talking about the solid waste, one of first things I want to do is just quickly review the entire solid waste system. And that generally consists of four primary elements, which includes collection, transportation of the waste to a processing and disposal point, processing of the waste, if that is done, and then finally, disposal. Generally recycling occurs either at the collect point of collection or as a result of processing steps. And what we're going to be looking at in the technologies I'm going to be reviewing with you tonight, primarily focus on the processing and disposal options. And one of the points I want to make clear throughout this presentation is that no matter what technology you're looking at or what system you're looking at, every single one of them requires as part of that system somewhere in the system a sanitary landfill. The alternatives I'm going to look at, I've listed them, include sanitary landfill, waste energy recycling, composting, talk about some of the other more esoteric technologies that are out there and quickly discuss out-of-county haul. Beginning with the solid waste, the sanitary landfill, it's a system we're familiar with, it's the most common method of disposal that exists in the country and in the State of Florida, and it kind of sets the background for looking at the additional technologies. In Florida, approximately 40 percent of all of the waste is landfill. And that compares to a national average of about 60 percent Page 6 April 20, 1999 landfill. In looking at your -- the modern sanitary landfills, they're environmentally safe, they include groundwater protection systems, stormwater management systems, leachate management, which is the polluted water that can be generated, gas management systems. And modern sanitary landfills do not create lucent conditions. Now, I know there's an issue with -- and has been an issue with odors at your existing landfill, but in my experience of thousands of landfills, that's a problem and an issue that can be managed and mitigated and dealt away with. Modern landfills generally do not create these kinds of nuisance conditions. Couple of slides. And I know these are difficult to see, but fortunately we have a visual here. The first graphic I have up here is what's known as the standard liner system that EPA promulgated, and it's known as the Subtitle D Line, referring to the legislation. And it basically consists of two feet of clay overlain by a plastic synthetic liner, HDPE. And there's some samples of this type of liner that are available to see. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Would you pass that over to us, David? It's right in front of you. Thanks. MR. HAUSER: The system that's on the screen now is a little different and it's called a double liner system. And it's much more common in Florida, particularly where we don't have the extensive clay deposits. And this system essentially consists of two layers of HDPE liner, underlain by impermeable materials and with their own separate collection systems. And in fact, the system you see in front of you modeled on this podium is, in fact, a double liner system. This graphic merely shows the same double liner system showing the leachate collection pipes, which are embedded at the bottom of the landfill. One of the points I'd like to make, modern landfills that have these types of liner systems, and if you have the modern liner systems, have excellent, excellent records. These landfills have been used successfully for solid waste. They are very similar and, in fact, almost identical to the types of liner systems that are used in hazardous waste landfills that are now the new modern ones, and they have an excellent track record, and they have been very, very successful and in fact, you know, are promoted by EPA and everybody else. And this technology essentially is being exported across the world. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Could you tell us which one of these we have? MR. HAUSER: Which? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Which of the systems, the single or double that you were just describing. If have you told us yet what we have in this county? MR. HAUSER: In your existing landfill? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes. MR. HAUSER: I believe you have a single liner system in your existing landfill. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I just have a quick question. How many years -- you mentioned that this has been most successful. How many years are we talking about? 107 157 20? 25? MR. HAUSER: We have -- with the single liner systems in particular, we have over 20 to 25 years of experience with those now. And with the new double liner systems, we have in excess of 15 years with some of those double liner systems without any problem. Page 7 April 20, 1999 The real key of these liner systems -- and I know one is looking at the very long-term care of these things. These landfills are going to be there for a very, very long time. But if problems develop, what the general experience has been, if you're going to have problems, they show up very, very quickly. Once you have finished landfilling in an area and capped the cell and enclosed it, like some of your cells have been, the potential problem, even if there were problems, significantly decline. So it's only -- it's really during the active period of the landfilling that you're putting the greatest stress on the system and the greatest initiative into it. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And we have a single liner system? We don't have any double liners? MR. ILSCHNER: That's correct, we have no double liner. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Have we opened a cell in the last 15 years? I mean, if we have 15 years experience with double liners, why would we not have double liners? MR. HAUSER: Double liner systems didn't come into wide-spread use in the base of sanitary landfills for municipal solid waste probably until the last eight or nine, 10 years. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So have we opened a cell in the last eight, nine, or 10 years? MR. ILSCHNER: I think Cell 6. David, can you answer that question? Why don't you step up here to the mike. MR. RUSSEL: Yeah, our cells were built during the period of time that DEP had a single liner requirement. The first phase was built in 1987, and we started filling it in '88. And I believe the last phase was built around 1990. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. HAUSER: DEP, the state regulatory agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency, their base liner system is still the single liner system. One of the reasons in Florida we've gone to the double liner systems is because we don't have the clay. So these systems, the double liner systems, don't have the -- they use more synthetic materials to accomplish what the clay would accomplish. It's much less expensive to construct these in Florida where we don't have the clay materials available. So we're not -- it's not a -- it's a different type of an existing technology that you would save money. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Not necessarily a better system, just a different one. MR. HAUSER: In fact, in designing and building one like these, you have to demonstrate that it performs at least as well as the regular single liner composite system would perform. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. Commissioner Carter, do you have a question? COMMISSIONER CARTER: No, I'm all right. I understand where he is. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. HAUSER: This graphic is just a typical landfill gas extraction well, similar to the ones that you have at your landfill, for extracting gasses. This one would take them off to a flaring system for destruction off of a generation of energy. One of the things in looking at what's going on into the solid waste industry today, it's amazing both in this country and over in Europe the amount of research that is going into sanitary landfill Page 8 April 20, 1999 technology. We've got the landfills, we're looking at them and trying to find ways to make them better and better. One of the ways that they're getting approved is using alternate liner and cap systems, similar to the system you see there, where we're looking at better ways of using different new synthetic materials, new materials that are being specially developed for use in landfills, to improve the performance of landfills, and at the same time to manage and keep costs down. And that's an issue, too. And so there's a lot of excitement going on in that area for enhancing performance. Landfill mining is something that is being looked at in a number of areas. Collier County was one of the leaders and had one of the first mining operations in the country, in Collier County. Mining is something that you see at different places around the country. And only now you're beginning to see landfills that were designed to incorporate mining -- potential mining in them that were designed that way from the beginning are now coming on line and being developed. Recirculation, wet cell technology, is a technology where leachate is being recirculated to the landfills to cause the landfill -- it helps stabilize the leachate, and it also helps the landfill decompose even faster so it reaches its final settlement stabilization, stopping a generation of gasses on a much quicker time frame. And again, it's not something that's for use in every application, but again, it's another technology that's being researched and evaluated. The State of Florida now has a demonstration program going up in Baker County where they're demonstrating this type of technology. Most landfills are -- the decomposition occurs anaerobically, that's without any oxygen present. The reason that methane gets generated. Our new technology is looking at injecting air into the landfills and having the landfills decompose aerobically, which hopefully will speed up the decomposition and improve some of the qualities. And finally, reusing landfill sites, turning them into useful property after they're completed is something that's really coming to the forefront. And I would say more particularly in the northeast where they have higher land demands. And you also may have heard the Brown Fields, trying to take ahold of contaminated sites and turn them into useful projects. COMMISSIONER CARTER: May I just interrupt? Ed, are you going to come back and talk about what we're doing in these areas, in our old landfill? MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, sir, we'll be discussing that. And Mr. Bigelow will address some of the current and some of our future plans. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. MR. HAUSER: Some of the issues, just quickly, associated with landfills include the, you know, potential for environmental impacts that are associated with any solid waste facility. And again, I want to emphasize the excellent performance record that modern landfills have. They do -- another disadvantage, they do have large land requirements. There's always the issue of traffic associated with any solid waste facility, and siting new landfills. And some of you may have heard siting landfills is sometimes very difficult. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Really? MR. HAUSER: I've done a lot of them and I haven't found an easy Page 9 April 20, 1999 one yet. Typically sanitary landfills for, you know, a county the size of Collier is generally in the cost range of 15 to $22 per ton. And again, I'd like to emphasize every landfill -- every solid waste system needs a landfill as part of the system. Waste to energy facilities. In Florida about 17 percent of the waste is combusted, and nationally about 11 percent is combusted in waste energy facilities. Modern waste energy facilities must meet stringent air regulations. For the most part, they generate electricity to sell to the power grid. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: These are incinerators? MR. HAUSER: Incinerators. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just so we don't misunderstand when we say we sell, these aren't moneymakers, though. That offsets some of the cost, but these are not moneymakers. MR. HAUSER: When you see the cost, you'll realize that they are not moneymakers. In fact, the key to recognize is that they're solid waste disposal systems that happen to generate some energy as a side by-product. There's been no new facilities in Florida for municipal solid waste since 1991, when the one in Lee County came on line. There's currently 13 of them in the State of Florida. The cost range for waste energy facilities, and this is net of any revenues in general, is in the 65 to $75 per ton range. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And just to take us back, the one typical is what as opposed -- the slide before that, you told us what? MR. HAUSER: The sanitary landfill? I believe it was 15 to $22 a ton. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Wow, 50 bucks more. MR. HAUSER: This is a picture of the Pasco County energy recovery plant, which is about the same size as Collier County might require of almost 1,000 tons per day. This is just a typical cross-section for a waste energy facility with receiving. The combustion chamber. The heart gasses that pass through boilers to generate steam and then electricity. And the air is put through extensive air pollution control systems. Again, some of the issues associated with waste to energy include the environmental impacts associated with them. And with waste energy facilities, it's primarily the potential on the air side that is where the concern is. Disaster management issues. These plants produce ash that has to be managed. And there's a big program now looking at various ways to reuse this ash in beneficial ways. Again, we have the traffic associated with the siting, and they have higher costs. You still need a landfill for residue and the bypass waste, the material that can't be combusted, or one of its facilities not working. Composting. The rate currently, there are less than 10 composting facilities in the United States that are handling municipal solid waste on a regular basis. There's one in the State of Florida, working at about 60 tons per day in Sumter County. This facility was originally built eight or nine years ago, had all kinds of problems, was shut down for a period of time, was refurbished with new Page 10 April 20, 1999 digesters, and has been operating for less than a year at about a 60 ton per day rate. There's very few of them in the country. A number of years ago there were many more of them. Not too many more, but others. Most of them have shut down or have been closed, and there's very few operating. You do find composting operations around the country and in the State of Florida much more commonly associated with specific waste streams of organic waste. For example, sludge from wastewater treatment facilities, yard debris, manure, food waste and other agricultural wastes. There are composting facilities focusing on those specific elements, as opposed to the municipal solid waste. Most modern compost facilities use aerated static pile or windrows. And these are really very large systems that are similar to what you were doing with a backyard composting system. It's put in piles, it's turned periodically, the air can be injected. And then there's the in-vessel and horizontal agitated bays, which are really where the composting operations takes place in enclosed vessels under controlled conditions. Every one of them needs odor control systems. You have front-end material separation. Before the waste can be put into the composting operation, it has to be processed, cleaned up, generally shredded or size reduction, and that all adds money to the cost of the system. And then there's -- when you get the compost, it's very -- there's a level of beneficiation or various levels of cleaning up the compost that you can do, depending upon what you're looking for your market. This is not the greatest graphic. It looks great when you're looking at it on a laptop, but it doesn't look too good when it comes through. But it's essentially a flow through a typical composting facility showing a lot of front-end processing and treatment, the composting operation, and then the cleaning up of the compost material after it's generated. This is a -- the heart of a composting facility, and it's shows an in-vessel type composting machine. And this is a picture of a composting facility in Burlington County, New Jersey, which primarily handles sludge, food waste and some mixed municipal solid waste. It's one of the few that's handling municipal solid waste. And it's just a small part of the bedsock. The cost range for composting is in the 55 to $80 per ton range. That in fact is one of the problems that was associated with the early composting operations where they were sold as relatively inexpensive systems that could be made to work. They do work, but when you make them work properly, control the odors and do everything that's necessary to come up with a good product, the cost immediately goes up. And we've been finding they're in the 55 to $80 per ton range. Their issues associated with them include odors, the facility, there was a composting plant in Hollywood, Florida which closed primarily due to odor problems. There's no long-term performance record with the composting facilities operating over a period of time. There's no stable markets for the compost material produced. And in fact, of all the compost products, compost for mix -- municipal solid waste is the lowest grade compost that you can produce. If it isn't cleaned up very, very well, it might have little pieces of glass in it or little pieces of other things. And so it's not a very high market Page 11 April 20, 1999 item. It also contains the contaminates that might be in the waste stream. And for a plant about the size of Collier County would require to compost all of its waste, and I'm speculating a little bit, but you would need approximately 1,000 acres in 10 years to spread the compost on, just for land spreading application. And at the end of 10 years, you would have then reached the rules and regs as to the land application rate that you could put some of the contaminants that would show in it on it. In terms of recycling and improving recycling, Collier County is doing very well now in terms of recycling, particularly very high recycling rates on the C and D material and yard debris. One option on the recycling is to extend your existing programs, get even more commercial recycling programs going, put more focus in condominiums and apartments, which are notoriously more difficult to get to the same participation rates that you'll see from single-family residents. You can increase your construction and demolition debris and increase the amount of yard waste material that you're doing. Because you're doing so well now, you're probably for these types of extension of the programs, you're not going to gain significant increases in the amount of recycling that you're doing. You're at a very good operating level now for the types of programs you have. To make the big leap, you would have to go to even new and expanded programs, which would get into processing, various mixed waste processing. Again, going into like -- pulling out with a lot of processing, screening, pulling the material off, trying to recycle that material, doing more recovery aspects and getting into some aspects of specialty waste composting. Cost range for additional recycling, you might be looking in the 100 to $300 per ton range for the recycling. One of the reasons for that is very simple. Recycling the first five percent is very easy, and you make a lot of money at it. It's primarily metals. Aluminum is worth a lot of money. The metals are worth something corrugated. As you move up to 10 percent on a program basis, you're breaking even. As you try to go after each additional increment of recycling, the cost goes up faster and faster and faster. And, for example, where you install composting for food waste materials, you'd have to pass an ordinance requiring restaurants and others to separate the food waste. You'd have to institute a separate collection system to collect that and bring it to the composting facility which you would then have to construct. So the cost can escalate up pretty rapidly for them. They are high costs. They require the expanded support requirements. They usually require customer service changes and inconvenience which, you know, generally speaking in this country, our customers, the resident on the street who puts it out very much don't like some of the changes that you might see in Europe, where they're required to put out, you know, 10 or 12 different bins for collection, for separate collection, and you still require a landfill. Quickly, on out-of-county disposal, you're looking generally at a cost range for out-of-county disposal of 30 to $40 per ton currently. You lose some control and flexibility with out-of-county disposal. And the other issue is you must still address the continuation of funding of your other solid waste programs. You have a lot of programs going on. You're all integrated as part of a system. Just sending one element out of county doesn't necessarily address all the Page 12 April 20, 1999 other elements. Just some other technologies. It's funny, I've been in this business for over 25 years, and I would say there was more activity with other technologies 20 years ago than there is today. You know, we had things like pyrolysis that were the big up and coming thing, methanolization, turning garbage into methanoi. We had, you know, even things like worm farms. We had hydrogenation. All kinds of processes were out there to come and that were going to save us and do everything with the solid waste. You don't see very much of those anymore. And it's very, very much a small sector. Some of the ones that are being talked about today, which again are all in the research area, include fluidized bed, which may be the furthest along and was actually used for coal combustion but has never successfully been used, even though it's been tried for any kind of a sizable solid waste facility. It's a type of incinerator with a different type of, if you will, combustion mechanism. Plasma arc is one that uses radiation to help destroy the solid waste, but it's being funded by some government agencies, and it's being looked at more for some esoteric hazardous waste materials, but they might be extensions into the solid waste area. Refuse derived fuel is a highly processed material where the waste is shredded, cleaned up, and the original thought was that it could be injected into boilers, for coal-fired boilers -- or oil-fired boilers and burned there. None of those projects have been successful. Where RDF plants exist now, they just take the material, put it in an incinerator and burn it. And it does have a little bit different burning characteristics. Baling is not a new technology, but the waste is essentially baled, compressed into bales and then landfilled. And in some areas, it's advantageous to do that to meet specific site conditions. For example, Bismark, North Dakota is putting in a baling facility. Why? Well, one of the reasons is because from, I guess, December through March they can't operate their landfill. You know, it's a wind chill of 30 below zero, they don't want men and equipment out there. The wind blows across the prairie pretty strong. And if you want to see litter, just go out and look at the prairie. So what they do in the wintertime and in bad weather is they will be baling the waste, storing the bales and then taking them out to the landfill when they can. And it's worth the added expense to them to meet a specific condition. Pit burners are something that -- there's still a few of them left in Florida. It's essentially a combustion system for wood waste and yard debris. Their primarily really only benefit is after emergencies where you have a hurricane and you have a huge amount of cleanup, they can get rid of it quick. As I mentioned, there are other technologies being researched, being developed. And most of those are not at any kind of a stage of demonstration. But there are a number of them at the university level on the bench level, primarily doing with advanced chemical treatment of the waste to try and break it down into its organic fuel start. At this time I'd like to introduce Dr. Charles Stokes, who is going to talk about fan technology with which he has some experience. DR. STOKES: This microphone? Thank you. I'm going to talk a little bit of perspective first, and then talk about the use of fans to overcome the odor problem. Page 13 April 20, 1999 As you know, I've always supported the county's approach to solving the solid waste problem. I'm not sure that I'm going to live long enough to see the solution. The record of the county is good in handling solid waste. We have not had disasters. We've not had wells polluted. We've not had people killed. And the waste has always been taken away at an extremely attractive cost. But on the other hand, where have we failed? We have not solved the odor problem. Two or three or four years ago I thought this was a marginal problem, but I've changed my mind. It is a problem that must be solved. There is as yet really no long-range plan to solve the waste problem in this county. The process has been over politicized. And finally, there's too many emphasis on cost. The cost of waste service is a very tiny cost to the citizen living in America today. And we worship at the alter of let's have the least cost we can get. If you continue to worship at that alter, as Mr. Hauser says, you simply lock yourself into landfill, landfill and landfill. That may be all right. Now, the alternates of what we can do are very limited. I take a very dim view of new methods, new magic methods of waste disposal. Paralysis of waste is about the worst thing you can imagine to do to it. Plasma arc is frightfully expensive. You're using electricity, which is very costly to produce to destroy waste. It's ridiculous. The alternatives are the same old ones we've seen. Incineration, which can be direct incineration or indirect. And I'll explain what that is. But first I want to emphasize what Mr. Hauser says. All of these methods require some landfill. Incineration, you have to landfill the ash. Probably 15 percent of the waste is still landfilled. Indirect incineration really means processing the waste, recovering a fuel and shipping the fuel to a power plant where it is burned in a coal-fired boiler. It's no sense to build new waste to energy plants. And I doubt if another major waste to energy plant will ever be built in the United States, ever. The cost is about $150,000 per daily ton. I'm talking capital costs. Mr. Hauser was talking the cost to the county, the tipping fee. I'm talking capital costs. $150,000 a daily ton. Processing waste, and I don't have time to go into that, would probably result in 15 to 20 percent landfill still. It will require 40 to $60,000 a daily ton of capital. And let me say this about composting: The rule should always be never to compost any more than you have to. Composting whole solid waste is nonsense. Five, six seven years ago, I thought that might be a good idea, but I don't anymore. Compost what you have to compost and no more. And then there's landfill. Now, it's very difficult to say what the cost per daily ton is in capital, but I suspect it's a range of 10 to $30,000 of capital. Much lower investment. You can do it in county, you can do it in export. What is in common with all of these technologies? And that's all they are. Don't expect some magic new technology to come along, because it's not going to do it. The thing that you have in common is you have to have a place to put it. Even exported ways requires a place. You've got to have a transfer station, you've got to get rid of your C and D waste, you've got to process your green waste and so on. You must have a place to Page 14 April 20, 1999 put it. Now, even if we accepted the present landfill, cleaned up the odor problem and everybody said that's fine, it has a limited life, as Mr. Russel has pointed out. Maybe 15 years, maybe 20, maybe 25. But it's limited. So even if you get A marks on the present landfill, you still need to do something else. It's not enough. We're in a box. We're in a box where we were 12 years ago when I stood at this podium very disgruntled over the vote -- no vote against the incinerator which, by the way, would have been a modern fluid bed incinerator, the latest state of the art. Didn't even get a vote. Nobody on the commission had the courage to offer a motion. So the whole project died after spending a million dollars promoting it for lack of a vote, for lack of a motion. I got up and said you never will site another landfill in this county and you'll argue the rest of your life about what to do with waste. Now, I didn't say you never could site a landfill. I said you never will. They're two different things. You can site a landfill in this county, and you better do it. You better find a waste site where you can landfill and process and do whatever you want to do. And you could do it. Now, therefore, we need a new site, regardless of what we do. And I hope that program does not die. Now, how do we save the present one long enough to keep the people from lynching the commission and give you time to do something else? Well, clearly, we have to solve the odor problem. Now, why can I talk about odor problems? I can talk about it because that's my business. Even today before I left my office, the last thing I did was work on an odor problem in Santa Barbara County, California. Now, what do you do with odor problems? You use common sense. At the site where you have the odor, you minimize it to the lowest level you can possibly get it. You do everything to minimize it at the site. If you get it low enough at the site, the way it was four or five years ago, it may not even be a problem, because it doesn't travel far enough at a high enough concentration. But that's not true anymore. Now, the staff will be talking later about what they're going to do, and Mr. Bigelow, to minimize the odor at the site to the lowest possible level. But if there is some left, what do you do? You do the exact same thing you do in the kitchen. When daddy gets up to cook the bacon for momma on Mother's Day, he forgets to put on the fan over the stove and the whole kitchen gets full of bacon. Momma gets up and comes out madder than hell and she says, "Why don't you turn on the fan?" Well, it doesn't do any good. So what does he do? He opens the window and turns on the ceiling fan and he disburses the odor because he can't get it out the stove fan fast enough. So that's what you do. What's left, you disburse. If the wind is blowing five miles an hour, you can go home because the wind will do it for you. No matter how bad the odor is at the landfill, if the wind's blowing five to six miles an hour, you don't have an odor travel problem, because the odor is diluted a short distance from the landfill below the level of smell. So I have simply proposed, and some people up in North Georgia have taken it up as a business, to install a means of dilution at the landfill site. That means fans. Fans make artificial wind. When nature doesn't make it, you do it with a fan. And then you turn around and say well, how do I know it will work? Well, I'm going to Page 15 April 20, 1999 give you some tests. And Mr. Ilschner will give you even more specific information later. But use your common sense. The amount of air that the fans that I would propose putting in, and I think probably Mr. Ilschner would agree, will bring enough outside air into the landfill to dilute the odor 10,000 to one. The amount of gas rising up out of that landfill is very small. And that's where the odor is, that little bit of gas that seeps up. It's more or less 500 cubic feet a minute. We're talking about putting fans up that will blow five million cubic feet a minute. So just like daddy and the bacon odor in the kitchen, it dilutes it. Common sense. Another common sense approach is what is the energy dissipated by a five-mile-an-hour wind blowing across a 1,000-foot wide landfill? Well, I didn't know exactly how to calculate that, so I got hold of a learned man out of Texas A&M who is concerned with taking the energy out of the wind. The reverse. Windmill power plants. And he calculated it out for me as about 27 horsepower. That's what the wind is exerting. We're proposing to put in fans that will exert 700 horsepower of mixing energy, 26 times as much as the wind. Then there's another test and that's velocity. The fans at their face, these fans are 18 feet in diameter and they sit up in the air 25 or 35 feet on a pole, are blowing wind at 50 miles per hour at the face. And 700 feet away it's still five miles an hour. Whereas Mother Nature only needs a five-mile-an-hour wind to dissipate the energy. So on the basis of velocity -- and you can use that velocity, you know, the energy is proportionate to the velocity squared. And when I ran out the energy input on the basis of velocity, it was 25 or 30 times as much as a five-mile-an-hour wind. On top of that is experience, and I'll let Mr. Ilschner talk about that. But experience teaches us an actual fact, that this can be done, it is being done. So that's where we are. A little perspective, and then let's solve today's problem. Thank you. MR. ILSCHNER: Thank you, Dr. Stokes. Mr. Hauser, will you summarize your presentation, please. MR. HAUSER: I'll try not to talk too fast and get to the end. But I think as Dr. Stokes pointed out, in looking at any technology, there's things you need to look at. And very quickly, just running through them, is it proven, is it reliable, has it got the right size, what are the impacts, product market availability, capital and O&M costs, are there contractors out there who can build it? Landfill requirements, siting issues, and regulatory requirements. Just a quick note in terms of what's going on in Europe and Asia, the Asian experience. The simplest thing to say is basically it's the same as the United States. There is a couple of differences, though. Overseas in the Far East and in Europe, landfill space is much harder to come by. They don't have the space. So you have a much heavier reliance on waste to energy. And in the Far East and in Europe, approximately 60 to 80 percent of the waste is incinerated. The rest is landfilled. There is also -- overseas you'll see much more aggressive and expensive recycling reuse programs, particularly in Europe, where you may have heard of the green dot programs and where companies and manufacturers are required to recycle and reuse a certain portion of material. It's been effective but it's a very expensive program and it's still in the institutional stages of being worked out. I was asked to just make a couple of comments on experience with Page 16 April 20, 1999 community mitigation measures that have sometimes been employed around solid waste facilities. And there's nothing new about them. In fact, they're not only used around landfills, but they're used around all of the popular types of facilities people like near them, like prisons and, you know, airports and shopping centers and coal-fired plants. And basically it's common sense. The most common you see is in -- even within Florida, is infrastructure improvements. As you put in the facility, there's an opportunity to extend utilities or extend roadways and improve the infrastructure and the other amenities around the site to benefit any of the surrounding landowners. Construction of community facilities in the area that can be used by people in the community and heavy community involvement. Have the people involved in overseeing the operation of the site, have them involved in the process. These are the most common types of things you see in terms of community mitigation measures. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Can I pause you there for a second? Because this is one that I specifically asked be added to be sure that it was included in tonight's presentation. I guess what I -- what I'd like to know is are these paid for -- give us some examples. Tell us something more specific than just community facilities. What would be -- what should we be doing or what's typical that we should otherwise be doing for the Golden Gate community as a result of our landfill dilemma? MR. HAUSER: In terms of infrastructure improvements, and I'm not sure where there might be opportunities for some of those, but as the facility is constructed, these infrastructure improvements utilities are brought in and financed as part of the project. They're paid by solid waste. Community facilities -- for example, I was involved in the siting of the new landfill in Hillsborough County, which is not new now, but it's 15 years old. They constructed a community park area, oh, about a mile and a half up the road. It was constructed as part of the -- out of the solid waste department's funding. It's been turned over to the park department for operation, but the solid waste department helps fund part of the fee to keep the thing going in that area. That type of thing where they're funded and paid for out of the -- as part of the development of the site and out of the ongoing revenues associated with that enterprise fund is not uncommon. Some of them put in nature facilities or educational facilities associated with it, where you can actually bring classrooms of people in to learn about recycling and landfilling and other things in the environment. And those kinds of structures are put in there. And that's -- those are very, very common types of -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: One of the things I've wondered about, and I hadn't thought to mention previously, but it is, I know we paid for road maintenance through the MSTD's, the districts, and it would seem to me appropriate that there is an additional burden on Golden Gate Road as a result of the trucks going through there and that perhaps a portion of that roadway maintenance should be paid for out of solid waste fees instead of out of just the typical geographic distribution of funds. Is that something that is done? MR. HAUSER: Yes. That's on the next line. There's things you can do to minimize the impacts, you know, by constructing extra, if you will, amenities at the facility. For example, additional screening or buffering can be included with the facility. Page 17 April 20, 1999 There are also operational maintenance things you can do. One of them, for example, is helping to offset any wear and tear on the local roads that come through there. Another one is to fund litter programs within a certain vicinity of the site; for example, along the mile or two of roadway leading to the site, they actually have a regular litter cleanup program along that highway that would be paid for out of the solid waste department funds. Getting into -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: That's an idea. MR. HAUSER: -- more of -- and more types of things, and you don't see these quite as commonly, but they have been used in different parts of the country and in Florida, is special assessment districts, differential assessment districts and special benefit districts as set up, funded by different programs. I -- even though I pretend to be sometimes, I'm not an attorney, but these areas that have been used in other states, and it depends on the exact structure of them, the state law and how they can be interpreted and implemented where they've been done, but they have been done. And it's probably -- it's not only legal, but also, you know, from a political point of view you have to look at, you know, one-half of the community subsidizing another half of the community, which is what some of -- you're getting into. And that's a political decision as much as anything. I'm finally at the summary. I'd just like to conclude that, you know, the Solid Waste Management System includes many individual elements. Landfill is always necessary. You're never going to get away from landfill. Landfill is the least disposal -- the least expensive disposal option that's available. It may not necessarily be the best in many cases, there's other considerations, but it certainly is the least. And modern landfills are environmentally safe and generally should not cause nuisance conditions. With that, I guess I'll turn it over to -- MR. ILSCHNER: Thank you very much, Mr. Hauser. Madam Chairwoman, I would next like to discuss briefly how we got to where we are today with respect to the odor, what is the current situation at the landfill. After I conclude that, Mr. Bigelow of Waste Management will then tell you what our plan of action is to correct that problem. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Let me just check with our court reporter. Do your fingers need a break? THE COURT REPORTER: No, I'm fine. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. ILSCHNER: Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. We had a problem with odor in the area of Golden Gate and the area of 1-75 and the tollbooth for a number of years. There was speculation on where that odor might be generating from. The odor was associated with the water plant, it was said. And then some said no, we think it's the landfill. So this board directed staff to undertake a program to try to solve that problem. And the first element of that was to create a system to clean the water at the water plant, the south water plant. That project cost approximately 1.8 million dollars, and it was completed in April of last year, and fully operational at that time, and eliminated all hydrogen sulfide production, which was quite large, I might add, at that south water plant. The other thing that particular project did was to also help us Page 18 April 20, 1999 focus on the fact that there was indeed another source of hydrogen sulfide, which happened to be the Naples landfill. Well, how did that happen? It happened out of trying to do something good. The county identified a process to increase its recycling in Collier County, and so it chose to recycle its C and D materials into a daily cover for the landfill and use that, and maximize recycling in the county. That was a good effort. No one at that time in the industry, in the solid waste industry, knew that one component of that recycling of C and D called sheetrock or gypsum board, if pulverized and placed in the landfill and allowed to mix with water, which would naturally occur as a result of the utilization of that material, would result in the production of hydrogen sulfide gas. The staff or the county didn't know that -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When was that change initiated? MR. ILSCHNER: That change was initiated as they began to develop Cell 6. I could -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Ballpark time-wise? MR. ILSCHNER: David, that was approximately? MR. RUSSEL: 1991. MR. ILSCHNER: 1991. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. ILSCHNER: I wasn't here in the county at that time, and I'm sorry I couldn't answer that question. But at that point in time, the county was operating, of course, the landfill. And they began to use -- employ that process of pulverizing C and D, and they would place the waste material down, and they would place the C and D material that had been pulverized with gypsum board or sheetrock in it every day on top of the waste material. And what occurred over time was the creation of a large -- and I like to refer to it as a sponge or sieve being produced, because it was a very porous structure that was being constructed, which in turn allowed moisture or rain water to filter into the cell itself. That mixing with the gypsum began to produce a very large amount of hydrogen sulfide gas. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: How did that become to be discovered? MR. ILSCHNER: Well -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Was that an industry flaw? MR. ILSCHNER: The industry, I think, began to recognize that there were problems developing with C and D landfills about five years ago. It wasn't a common knowledge among the industry, but there were several areas where they were beginning to notice a smell issue with C and D landfills. No one exactly knew why. And over the last, I think, three years it's been determined that the component was gypsum board in those C and D landfills. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Once again, Collier County is on the cutting edge of technology. MR. ILSCHNER: When I arrived in Collier County, I was somewhat amazed that we had a landfill odor issue. And I drove out to the landfill, and I just couldn't believe what I smelled. I smelled hydrogen sulfide. I had never experienced that at any landfill that I have been associated with. So it is definitely an issue that was generated by our zeal and our effort to try to do something good, which was recycling. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Let me, just another question on that. Because there's an understandable perception among some that this is Page 19 April 20, 1999 the flavor of the day, you know, this is our excuse of the moment. Can you give me some indication? I mean, has there been an industry-wide change? Is this a totally unacceptable process now? How do we -- give me some more backup. MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, I think it has been recognized that it is an unacceptable process at this point. The industry's recognized that, the federal environmental protection agencies and the state agencies are recognizing that, and are not going to allow that process to continue with gypsum board as a component. Doesn't mean one cannot use some elements of C and D, but with gypsum board, it certain would not be allowed because it would result in the generation of H2S. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I appreciate the question and you can appreciate my skepticism because, I mean, for years first we were told no, the landfill didn't smell, and so we were apparently imagining something. And then it was the management, the way it was operated, and our guys weren't doing it right. And it wasn't Steve, but somebody representing Waste Management sat at that podium right there and said within six months of when we take this over, no odor whatsoever. And lo and behold, not only was there odor, but it's that much worse. And then it was no, no, you're smelling the water plant, you're not smelling the landfill. And we corrected the water plant. And well, it was the gas management system and we've worked on that. And now it's gypsum board. So when she says flavor of the month, I joke about it. Because we've been told for 10 years that it was something different. And every time we knock that reason out, there's another reason. MR. ILSCHNER: Commissioner Constantine, I can stand before you today unequivocally stating that the source of odor at that landfill is gypsum board being recycled and processed into that landfill. That is the basic cause of your problem. Now, in January of this year, after -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Just a moment. May I interrupt, please? MR. ILSCHNER: I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER CARTER: What are we going to do? I mean, we've got gypsum board. Now, you grind it up, it smells. If you just put it out there as solid chunks, isn't it going to still smell? MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, solid chunks will also create a problem ultimately for you. It certainly will, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER CARTER: So it has to be a separation process. MR. ILSCHNER: It has to be a separation process. We're going to call momentarily on Mr. Bigelow of Waste Management who will brief you on our plan of action. Under his contract, when these kind of issues arise, Mr. Bigelow and his company is required at the county's direction to develop a plan of action, and we have directed Mr. Bigelow and his company to do so. And he is here tonight to brief you on that plan of action, which we believe will solve your odor problem at that landfill. And I'll conclude, at the conclusion of his presentation, with my presentation on fan technology and why I feel that needs to be employed. Mr. Bigelow? MR. BIGELOW: Thank you, Mr. Ilschner. Commissioners, Madam Chairman, it's nice to be here with you tonight. Steve Bigelow, for the record. Could I move this? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Steve is just a pin and paper kind of guy. Page 20 April 20, 1999 COMMISSIONER CARTER: Steve, you're not a power point guy? MR. BIGELOW: I'm high touch. Commissioners, I'll ask the question before you ask it. How come your landfill has an odor? Okay. And I think that's a fair question, and I think that we need to discuss that. We've been asking ourselves the same question for some number of years. So just in brief summary, since 1996 we've spent in excess of 1.6 million dollars installing a gas management system with a flare to collect gas and flare it and to control the odors at your landfill. To date we have approximately -- well, to date we have 54 wells. We still have an odor problem. Every one of us know that, admit that, and we must solve it. Some months ago you will recall that our company merged with U.S.A. Waste. We still call ourselves Waste Management, Inc. of Florida. But our new management came and I introduced them to the Collier County landfill and they looked at me and they said solve the problem. And we intend to solve that problem and we're going to share it with you tonight. This is not the flavor of the month. This is a five million dollar solution. And if I may, I'm going to walk over here, take the microphone and point it out to you. As I said earlier, we have 54 wells currently at the landfill that's collecting gas, and we collect about 900 cubic feet per minute of gas. Someone asked the question earlier about hydrogen sulfide. After the storm that came through South Florida several years ago, we took a lot of that waste into our facilities over on the East Coast. Central landfill is one that received a lot of waste, demolition debris, horticultural debris. And we found that our levels of hydrogen sulfide in the last years have just significantly increased and we're having to clean up that gas before we can burn it. 0keechobee, on the other hand, is in an area that's not a high growth area. It doesn't get as much construction or demolition debris, more municipal solid waste. We're not seeing the hydrogen sulfide odors at 0keechobee. I think this is one of the things, or we might call it a cost of growth. We have a high concentration of gypsum board that's coming to the landfill. Now, whether or not that material would have been ground up and used as cover or just simply placed in the landfill, the gypsum board still would have been there. And I think we could have anticipated the same result as hydrogen sulfide gas. A few months ago we hired an engineering company called SCS out of Tampa, Florida to help us to review everything that we're doing and why we're doing it and why we still had odor problems. And that was part of their charge was to evaluate our 0&M of our gas system. They've done that. And as you know, we have LAW come in annually as well and look at our gas system. And the thing that we determined is that the leachate collection system, and you've seen the pipe, those are the pipes that are in the bottom of the cells that collect the nasty water. The leachate collection system has failed, basically experiencing failure in Phases I and II. Now, that's covered with approximately 100 feet of trash, and so it's not practical to go in to the bottom of the landfill and try to make corrective measures with collapsed pipe or pipe that won't handle the flow. We have leachate actually standing in there. We have Page 21 April 20, 1999 leachate or dirty water in our wells. It won't allow our wells to collect the gas that we need to collect. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: When did you discover that condition? MR. BIGELOW: We hired SCS in January, and we presented one draft plan of action to the county in mid-February, late February. And today we met with Mr. Ilschner and Mr. Russel and gave them a revised plan of action. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: But when did you discover this collapsed -- or this pipe that's allowing -- MR. BIGELOW: In February we hired a company called Jet Clean to come in and clean all of our lines and televise the leachate collection system, because we couldn't get the water out of the wells and out of the Phases I and II. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. BIGELOW: Okay. Now, the first thing -- our first concern upon discovering that the leachate collection system was not operating properly was to ask SCS to look at Phase III, and that's the area right here. Because within the next 90 days, as you heard earlier, we're going to go in here and place trash here. And we will not -- and Mr. Ilschner is in agreement with me, we will not create the same problem that was created since 1991. We won't fill this with 100 feet of trash with a collection system that doesn't work properly. So our engineers have looked at this system and have come up with a revised and updated leachate collection system which is going to cost in the neighborhood of three to $400,000 to put in some new line, remove the vegetation, clean the roots out of the lines. These new leachate lines will be on about 50-foot centers. They will drain the cell, and they will keep the head 12 inches or less, which is a regulatory requirement. Follow me? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yeah. I'm still stuck, though, on the point of -- right now we're in violation of our permit because of the leachate problem? I mean, that's unsettling to hear. MR. BIGELOW: We have some issues there that we can address, and I'm going to -- Commissioner, that I want to follow up if I can and tell you what the solution is in Phase I and II. Okay? But we focus, because we're moving -- we will be moving in here within 80 to 90 days and begin to floor out Phase III of the landfill. This is the only place you have to go with garbage for the next five, six years. And we didn't want to recreate that. So this has nothing to do with the odor, but if we don't do this now, there's a real urgency here. If we don't do these corrective actions now, we'll be here in five or six years with the same problems that we currently have in Phases I and II, okay? Now, that's not the immediate solution to odor at the landfill. We can't do anything about the hydrogen sulfide that's in the landfill, but we can begin to dewater Phases I and II. And what we will do is dewater the landfill from the top rather than the bottom. SCS has looked at a dewatering system for us, and it's basically a dedicated series of pneumatic pumps that will be put down in wells. These wells will pump the liquid out of the gas system. That system -- that liquid will flow through the leachate collection lines to the pump stations and be pumped on to the county's wastewater treatment plant for treatment, like we're currently doing now, with a leachate that we're currently collecting. That will allow the existing 54 wells to operate more efficiently, and we'll be collecting more gas. Now, once we get Phases I and II sufficiently dry enough, we are Page 22 April 20, 1999 proposing to install six new gas wells in Phase II, the south half of Phase II in this area right here. Because our horizontal scans indicate to us that the problem with gas in the landfill is in this area on the south end of Phase II, where we don't have gas wells. So we've got to put additional gas wells in there. Those are permitted. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: How long is that dewatering from the top process going to take? MR. BIGELOW: We think that those wells are going to operate for some significant period of time, Commissioner, because -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Months? MR. BIGELOW: Possibly years. There's water in there. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Before you can install the six new wells? MR. BIGELOW: No, we think that we can get that -- we estimate that this -- what we're talking about here is going to happen in the next 80 days. We're looking at a solution in the next 80 days. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So I misunderstood then. I thought that you had to dewater cells one and two before you could install the six new gas wells. MR. BIGELOW: We won't dewater it completely, but we'll get it sufficiently dry enough that we can drill three-foot diameter holes that won't collapse so that we can construct new gas wells. And then once we get those wells in, we'll put pumps, pneumatic pumps, down those wells and begin to pull water from that area, if you follow me. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I do. MR. BIGELOW: Okay. Now, Commissioner Norris, I believe it was -- it's your suggestion, I recall, where you made the decision to close -- or recommendation to close Phases I and II. If I could, would you -- the liner -- excuse me, the liner that we would propose to use is here, and I want you to see it, feel it, touch it. That's a piece of 60 mill. HDPE liner. To encapsulate the waste, to isolate the waste in the hydrogen sulfide gas in Phases I and II would be a complete closure of this. It's basically a 54-acre footprint. A full closure will cost in the neighborhood of $82,000 an acre. What we call intermediate cover, and that's just the liner itself, will cost you in the neighborhood of $50,000 an acre. We looked at this as a closure, somewhat as premature, but under the broad umbrella of odor control, and we concur, is that with this leachate system failing, with these millions of tons of gypsum board that's in here, with the waste -- and mixed with gypsum board, producing hydrogen sulfide, you're going to have to isolate and encapsulate this area of the landfill. Once it's encapsulated, it will never ever be removed. It will stay sealed. Now, that will do two things: One, it keeps the gas, the obnoxious gas inside there. Where the 60 wells -- I'm sorry, it's not 60 on this hill, but the wells that are in there, which is estimated to be about 36, will extract the gas, take it to the flare, which will be burned, and control the odor. It will do another thing, and that is stop the infiltration of water. Mr. Ilschner described this as a sponge. And that's the best description that I know of is that it's just -- every time it rains, it soaks up water. Now, what we have been doing since December 24th is we stopped using processed construction and demolition debris. We went to using soil. We were directed by DEP to stop. Since that time, DEP has required that every square foot of this hill be covered with a minimum Page 23 April 20, 1999 of six inches of dirt. And in some places we've got 18 inches of dirt. And before it's sealed up with the liner material, it will all have 18 inches of dirt. And what we would recommend, that since we're going to expand in a southerly direction in Phase III, that you not place any soil over the liner on the south side, nor should you place any soil on the east side, because until you come up with another solution, it looks like that you have a potential for a horizontal expansion in the easterly direction, which I believe will give you about another 10 years. And I heard earlier about six here. And then because you are going in a horizontal expansion, you will be required to go up some small amount, just to get the water off the top of the landfill. So there's a slight vertical expansion just to shed water off the top. And I think the minimum is two percent. All right, if you seal and encapsulate this waste, dewater it, catch all the gas, flare it, correct the problems here, put in the new gas wells that I described, it's about a five million dollar solution. And that's what we're proposing. We think that the liner material could be installed in the next 80 days. Now, because we're going into wet season, we recommend that we do the solicitation and negotiations of competitive price proposals. We'll submit all of those to Mr. Ilschner for his approval. We will complete this encapsulation of waste at the earliest possible date, within about an 80-day period, and then we will stop and do some air quality monitoring, because it's extremely important that we know. And I think, Commissioner Berry, you have asked for this before, is that we know if we're doing anything to solve the problem. So you have to do some air quality monitoring to know. And so we'll do the air quality monitoring, I'll be back to you within 120 days, and then after wet season in 1999, we would propose in January to come back and do a complete closure on the north and the west slope, which is our entire responsibility. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And that just can't -- it can't be done -- that full closure can't be done before wet season? MR. BIGELOW: Commissioner, we don't think you need full closure if you're going to do a horizontal expansion. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I'm clear on the east and the north. MR. BIGELOW: Well, the complete closure, you'd have all the waste encapsulated in an 80-day period. The only thing you wouldn't have would be more dirt and more topsoil and sod over the north and the west portion. And that is our responsibility under the contract, and that's something that we would complete at our expense in January of 2000. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Now, that's additional to the five million that you just talked about? MR. BIGELOW: No, sir, that's all included in the five million dollar cost estimate that I just mentioned. And I could break it out separately, if you'd like for me to. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And I just didn't get the timing. I need you to give me that one more time, about when would this be completely covered with that plastic, or whatever it is? MR. BIGELOW: From the day that we are authorized to proceed. And I've received a letter, I think, from Mr. Russel -- MR. ILSCHNER: To start the planning. MR. BIGELOW: -- to start the planning. We're already right now soliciting proposals from engineering Page 24 April 20, 1999 firms. We have to modify the closure plan. Because the existing closure plan that we have includes all of Cell 6. We have to modify the closure plan, get DEP approval, we have to solicit proposals from at least three qualified bidders, we'll select a bidder, we'll negotiate a contract, we'll bring that contract to Mr. Ilschner, we'll proceed in a very timely manner. We've got to also, during that same period, we've got to complete these leachate system improvements in Phase III. We don't want -- we really would like to have one contractor, if possible, because we've got work on this south slope, and we don't want two contractors in here arguing over who should be there first. We'd really like to have one. Get this south slope sealed up. Because this is where our problem is, is on the south slope. Let's seal it up as quickly as we can. Sealing it up will also help dry it up. And the pumps will also help dry it up. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So your best guess at the time -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: What is the time line again, roughly? If we said yes, build that for me. MR. BIGELOW: Commissioner, we've got some -- a plan of action. We've got some dates. And I'm looking at Carolyn McCreedy with out company here, because we had worked up some dates and some letters that we presented to Mr. Ilschner today. It's basically 80 days from today, if I recall correctly. Carolyn, have you got that date handy? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Bigelow, just to make sure I'm clear on that, I think you're saying that you can put the liner on and do the closure in 80 days, but I thought I heard you say it was going to take longer than that to drill the additional six gas wells; is that not correct? MR. BIGELOW: No, sir. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You're not proposing that? MR. BIGELOW: All of this work will be done concurrently during this 80-day period. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. MR. BIGELOW: And the reason is, is we've got the wet weather coming. Now, we've made some -- we've made some strides over the last three months, this additional dirt that we've put in. We've had four pumps at different times and different wells pumping leachate out of the system. The landfill is about as dry as it's going to get, if we don't make some additional improvements. Because when it starts raining, even though we've put this additional dirt on top of the landfill, it's going to start producing more leachate, because the water will penetrate eventually through the soil cap. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No, that was not my concern. My concern was that I wasn't clear on the timing there, and it sounded to me like you were going to go ahead and put the liner on and then drill wells after that. MR. BIGELOW: No, sir. We intend to put the wells in first. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. MR. BIGELOW: And so we'll have a driller -- we'll have a driller on site putting the wells in, we'll be -- our contractor will be putting the pumps in. We have to put in some leachate collection lines in the soil, and that will be buried. Now those pumps will eventually be pulled out of Phase II and can be used in Phase III or subsequent expansions of the landfill for Page 25 April 20, 1999 later. But the leachate -- the work that we spend on the leachate lines up on top will remain under the liner. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And how long after the -- is it -- I'm trying to identify a reasonable community expectation for when we could drive out there, walk around and notice a difference. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Open my lanai door? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes. Is the 4th of July, Independence Day, for Golden Gate? That's a little -- MR. BIGELOW: Carolyn, give me a date? 120 days, Commissioner. Is that starting when, May 17 MS. McCREEDY: That's from the date that we proceed with the -o we start the leachate collection system repairs in -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So it's more like Labor Day than the 4th of July. But by the time summer is over, they would be able -o we shouldn't have a smell problem? MR. BIGELOW: My biggest concern right now is that we're going to have a wet summer. I've been watching the projections by the UoS. Weather Bureau, which is predicting a hotter and dryer summer. So with that, we're in luck. And we'll get a contractor moving as quickly as possible. We'll probably work seven days a week to get this done as quickly as possible, but we want to get those wells in, those pumps in and the liner in as quickly as possible. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So tell me when people who live there will be able to notice a difference. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Labor Day. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Labor Day? MR. BIGELOW: Labor Day. I think Labor Day is a good target. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. BIGELOW: And my desire would be much sooner than that, but we'll -- let's shoot for Labor Day. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Okay. DR. STOKES: It should be much sooner than that with all you're doing. MR. BIGELOW: Well, you know, Dr. Stokes, as you would recognize, once you encapsulate the waste and take the water out and have the gas trapped, yes, that should be the answer, the solution. And we brought our engineer with us to the meeting today, and I asked him in front of Mr. Ilschner, did he have any reservations about whether or not this would work, and he had none whatsoever. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Is he going to give us a written professional opinion so that we can sue him if it doesn't? Reasonable question. I get asked that as a lawyer, people -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I was going to say, only our lawyer member of the commission would ask that question. CHAIRWOMAN MAC,KIE: You can ask. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And then simultaneously, Steve, you will be working on the rest of that cell, putting in the new system in the bottom of that? MR. BIGELOW: Yes, sir, we have to. Because we are actually filling in this area right here. We are running out of air space. And when we run out of air space, we have no choice but to go into Phase III. Now, what we may do is we may do only one-half of the leachate collection system so that we can get in there immediately and then Page 26 April 20, 1999 finish it up at a later date. And what we actually propose is to cut this cell in half, have the entire system with the new leachate collection system, but actually cut it in half and put rain flaps in there so we can minimize the amount of leachate that we're producing. As you know, we pay for the treatment of the leachate, so we want to maximize the stormwater so that we can pump it in the ditches, and eventually into -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: You're giving us a plan that shows all of this, the time lines, and et cetera, et cetera. MR. BIGELOW: We presented that to Mr. Ilschner today. The only -- and the nature of our letters was here's the solution, please authorize and direct us to proceed, there's going to be some discussion as to whose responsibility it is, whether it's ours or the county's, because the county designed and constructed the leachate collection system in Phases I, II and III. So we think the county bears some responsibility into the financial aspect of this five million dollars. Also, we're closing early. Under the contract, we accrue $3.16 a ton. We anticipated that we would collect or accrue enough monies in about 9.4 years for closure. So when we set this up, it was a closure of all three cells. Now that we're closing early or prematurely for odor control and we anticipate expansion into the south and the east, we think the county should help us pay for this. Because when we move down here, we will close this cell at our expense. And when we move into this area, we will close this cell at our expense. Now, should we not do a horizontal expansion in the future, then we would true up with you at some future date for the monies that you had spent in closure, and we would reimburse you, the county. Because as you know, closure cost is our responsibility. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Right, and that's all manageable. You know, how it is worked out. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, it would seem to me, but the company said fix the problem, so I would really like to hold them to that, both fixing it and paying for it as much as possible. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Of course. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, it's also part of the contract we have with them, too. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I had thought we were going to have -- I had heard you guys talking about fans. Do fans -- MR. ILSCHNER: I'm going to -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- come into this? MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairwoman, I'm going to cover the fanned technology, and talk a little bit more about what we're going to do with respect to odor control and odor monitoring, as soon as you're concluded with Mr. Bigelow with questions. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Other questions for Mr. Bigelow? Dr. Stokes? Dr. Stokes -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Dr. Stokes, Dr. Stokes, Dr. Stokes, you can't do that. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: We have to confine it to our questions. We'll get a chance and if you communicate with us, we'll be sure to continue to communicate. My -- I feel an obligation to ask what kind of independent verification we have that this system, this early cover, early closure, is sufficient to solve the problem, or 80 days from solving a Page 27 April 20, 1999 problem. MR. ILSCHNER: As far as an outside independent separate engineering firm to come in and verify that, we have not. We have looked at the credentials of the engineering firm that has performed this investigation, and based on our own background and knowledge in the industry, feel that the complete encapsulation of this system will seal it off and solve the problem. You have to look at this like it was just a big sieve or a sponge and moisture is going in. If you seal that moisture off, you do two things. You don't allow the moisture to go in any longer, plus you don't allow any gas to come out. Now, if you try to pull a vacuum on something with a lot of holes in it, you can't pull a vacuum. And that's what we're trying to do, pull a vacuum on something that's full of water and also that's full of holes. Now, if we seal off the holes, seal off the moisture, we put a vacuum on it, guess what happens? We begin to pull all of that gas, collect it, and flare it. So it will work -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'm with Commissioner Mac'Kie -- MR. ILSCHNER: -- and it is a solution. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- I mean, I understand the theory, but I like contract performance. That's what I'm looking for. MR. ILSCHNER: Certainly. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Somewhere in this process, I want to see something that says, are they going to work with us through and get this resolved and not come back and say, see, we tried this and we're sorry, it didn't work. MR. ILSCHNER: Their contract requires the solution to be accomplished. And we're going to hold them to those contractual requirements, and they will complete the job and properly. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And I guess this -- it also requires us to completely buy the theory that -- and I'm not questioning it, but that gypsum board is the, the, the problem. Now, we've eliminated everything but that and that's all there is, because this solution is entirely developed around that thesis. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No, I don't believe that's correct at all. It doesn't matter what's causing the odor. If you encapsulate that cell, whatever it is, is trapped and you can take the gas out and get rid of it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It is for that cell. However, as you work on the next one, if gypsum board wasn't the problem, then you still have the problem on the next location. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: We create another problem. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's not what she said. MR. ILSCHNER: And I wanted to try to -- I want to try to attempt an answer for that. I know that will always be a concern. But I can stand before you based on my research, and I'll attempt to provide an additional report to you, but we also employed, if you recall, Camp-Dresser-McKee, a separate engineering firm under our direction, to investigate the cause of the odor. And they concluded, as we have, that hydrogen sulfide is being produced as a result of the recycling process with gypsum board. That's a conclusion. Now, it doesn't mean there isn't landfill odor also that mixes with that hydrogen sulfide gas, and as the methane, which is lighter than air, carries it out of the landfill, this gas will have a little slightly different smell than your normal H2S smell, hydrogen sulfide smell. Page 28 April 20, 1999 But I can stand before this body today and tell you that the primary cause of your problem is the practice of recycling construction debris involving and including gypsum board. Once that is eliminated, once you encapsulate -- you're not going to be able to go in and remove what you have there now. It's already there. You have to seal it off. Once you've sealed it off, you've solved your problem with respect to the historical development of that. Now, the future development is going to involve elimination of the hydrogen sulfide production from gypsum board. And there may always be some concern that there be a landfill odor. And I want to try to address that for you if I could for a few minutes. Let me start off by having the computer put on for a moment. We've talked a little bit about landfill odor, and I want to just briefly tell you what we're going to be doing as we proceed with this process with respect to odor monitoring. As you know, I've traveled to Severe, Tennessee -- Severeville, Tennessee, Severe County, Tennessee, to look at fan technology. I was somewhat skeptical in my mind that fan technology would work, even though Dr. Stokes assured me it would, he was an expert in the area, I was skeptical. I also took a trip out to Sacramento, California, to a wastewater treatment plant in which they have a very smelly problem associated with sludge lagoons, and it produces a high amount of hydrogen sulfide, especially in the summer months. And there was large residential areas in the vicinity of that wastewater treatment plant inclusive of a very large computer plant. I visited that site where they have employed fan technology, and have been very successful with that technology. When people smell an odor, they holler at the plant, turn on the fans, and the fans dissipate the odor. I've visited with a few of those residents around there, as well as the staff that employ that fan technology. They're very pleased and it does work. While I was there, I asked what do you do to try to help people identify odors that may not generate from your plant or, say, from this landfill? And they say they have an ongoing program, an odor monitoring program, which we would suggest and recommend to you that we employ here. What is that going to entail? It's going to entail -- and I'll just momentarily step over to this mike. It's going to entail placement of a detection device somewhere in the vicinity of this edge of the landfill. It's going to entail putting a weather station up here. It will be an automated weather station. The weather station will record wind speed, direction, temperature, and it will do it automatically. And our staff, when we get a complaint about odor, will be able to tell what direction the wind was blowing and what the speed was. It will also employ as detection devices, devices that measure H2S, which is the primary gas creating the odor, down to almost human smell. First time that we've been able to run across a device of this type. It's manufactured by Arizona Technology. It's got a gold filament in it and it measures down to the parts per billion of hydrogen sulfide. That's sufficient enough to go out and find the source of the hydrogen sulfide production. I submit to you that a lot of odors exist in Collier County. And a lot of odors are blamed on a lot of things. We want to try to educate the public and ensure if we have an odor generating from this Page 29 April 20, 1999 site that we can detect that and detect it automatically and then resolve it. So the odor monitoring program with those kinds of high-tech detection devices, I think, will be essential in addressing the issue of landfill odor even in the future. Now, let me get to fan technology. Fan technology, as I say, was a technology that I didn't have a lot of faith in, didn't believe in until I made these trips. Let me kind of tell you what it involves. When you have a low velocity or laminar flow wind, this is something less than five miles per hour, and you have a heavier than air/gas like hydrogen sulfide, that gas will migrate along the surface, and it will move in direction of that laminar flow. Nothing there to break it up. There's not enough speed of wind to break it up. So it's a plume of hydrogen sulfide that goes across Golden Gate City or it goes across Cracker Barrel and they smell it to high heaven. When you have a wind higher than five miles per hour, it breaks up. It's no longer laminar flow, it becomes turbulent flow. It's moving this way and it's dispersing that gas. The concept of the fan technology that's been developed by Erickson's involves the utilization of the inversion layer. There's a layer of air. And if we can get any odor that we may have above that layer, it will not come down. It disperses. Plus it's above the inversion layer and you can't reenter that. So that's the concept that they have. And they have employed two types of fans. These are Orchard fans and this is a picture of one of those fans. This was the fan that was employed, I believe, in Georgia at a plant that they have there. And these two vertical fans are called a virtual chimney technology. And they shoot a column of air five or 600 feet up in the air. And in addition to that, we also have horizontal fans of the same size. These big Orchard fans blow the air inward toward the center fan. So that any odor you might have being generated is not allowed to leave in laminar flow conditions off the site but is directed back in toward the virtual chimney, and shoots above the inversion layer. This technology has been used very effectively out in California at Ponta Hills. They have several of these Orchard fans out there and they feel that they have been very successful in mitigating a lot of the odor problems they had at that particular landfill. What we intend to do is place -- as we develop this next cell, we intend to place the center fan in the center of this cell and these four fans that we would plan to employ out along the boundaries of this. And they'll be on skids. And what will happen is this weather station will note a wind below five miles per hour, and a radio telephone unit or a device will cause these fans to cut on automatically, to disburse any odor that might be there, landfill odor or whatever it might be at that level of wind. Any wind above five miles per hour would automatically disburse it. That's our plan of action. We would plan to purchase these fans on a lease/purchase basis, on a performance basis. The manufacturer would come and set this in place, we would measure its performance over a year. If it worked effectively and we could prove that, we would purchase. Otherwise, he'd remove them. Any'questions on fan technology? I became a believer after I visited and talked to residents out Page 30 April 20, 1999 in Sacramento, California, and people who had to deal with these kinds of odors. COMMISSIONER BERRY: How many fans do you think it will take, Mr. Ilschner? MR. ILSCHNER: Five fans. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Five fans. MR. ILSCHNER: We think the cost will be between 100 and $200,000 for those fans, about $20,000 for the automated weather station, the detection devices, two fixed detection systems. We're going to place a detection device on the other side of the water plant. Because if we have a problem with the water plant, the system goes down for maintenance or whatever might be the case, hydrogen sulfide will be produced at that plant. We want to be able to detect any production at that plant as well. Because that was creating a problem in Golden Gate City and elsewhere as well. And we want to be able to correct that problem, once it's noticed. So we'll place an automated detection system there, one here. Those will cost 15,000 to $20,000 apiece. And we'll employ three of those. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Now, if someone calls and complains, then you're going to have a tracking system to try to figure that out. MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, sir. We will have personnel who will report to the complainant's location, and we really want to try to find out what their problem is and help solve it. It could be a septic tank. I talked to a lady the other day and I said, do you ever smell around your house? And she said, yeah, it's my darned septic tank I've got, though. And so their septic tanks can create the same kind of odor. Lift stations that have become septic, we -- the motors have become defective. We might not have visited that site for preventive maintenance; might be creating hydrogen sulfide odor. So we'll have staff that will go to the location, they'll use these detection devices to measure the level of H2S, they'll have a wind speed indicator with them and a compass and a map. And they'll be able to show which direction the wind is coming from, what the speed of that wind is, and the level of H2S being detected. And it may well be coming from the opposite direction of the landfill or the water plant or whatever. But we'll be able to then take this very sensitive detection device and travel to the site where it's generating the odor and solve that particular odor problem as well, or at least identify the source and share that with the resident who is experiencing the problem. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And if it's the septic tank -- MR. ILSCHNER: We can help them recognize that and get it corrected, hopefully. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And I'm confused about this detection device. It will detect H2S, or it will detect anything that smells bad, or it will detect what? MR. ILSCHNER: Well, it's going to be primarily established to detect hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is the gas that's heavier than air, that's generated out of a landfill or a wastewater treatment plant or a sewer system that will hover along the surface and not go ahead and dissipate, because it's heavier than air. So that's the primary constituent when you have a smell problem. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: My question is -- MR. ILSCHNER: So, no, it will not detect any other type of gas. Page 31 April 20, 1999 CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I guess again, I'm worried about -- I want to anticipate problems. And if -- what if it turns out that isn't the gas that's the smell problem out there? What if there's some other -- you know, we're telling you it smells bad, you're telling us it's hydrogen sulfide. What if there's some other gas out there, too? MR. ILSCHNER: Based on my knowledge of landfills and wastewater treatment plants, the primary gas produced in both of those facilities, especially if you have a digester on a wastewater treatment plant, the two primary gas that are produced are methane. These are gases that are generated associated with decomposition. Methane, which is lighter than air. Methane is colorless, methane is odorless. That's why natural gas companies -- I know you don't know much about natural gas in Southwest Florida, but I come from an area where we have natural gas and they introduce odor into the natural gas so you can smell it. The other of course is hydrogen sulfide, which is also associated with decomposing materials. Those are your two principle gasses of any consequence. COMMISSIONER CARTER: So there's really not any other gas that's going to give us a problem; is that what I'm hearing? MR. ILSCHNER: I'm stating to you I know of no other gas that would give you a problem at the landfill, based on my knowledge, and based on the engineers and solid waste experts that I have dealt with over the last 25 years. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Other questions? Comments? MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairwoman, I would like to conclude our comments and certainly be available to any further questions you might have, but I would like to conclude with the staff's assessment and understanding of your current policy. We've taken the opportunity to go back and look at all of the board's actions since 1988. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Good Lord. Regarding the landfill? MR. ILSCHNER: And I read a lot of landfill minutes over the last several days, as well as David Russel. And the attempt here was to try to identify in our mind what your current policy is. And based on that review, this is our understanding that I would like to share with you. The first action that this board took with respect to policy direction to the staff that we could determine was your decision not to expand the existing landfill site to the north on the adjacent 300 acres that was purchased to the north. The second policy direction to staff was to direct us to develop a process to locate and acquire a new landfill site. The third action that you directed us to do was to optimize the existing landfill site in the interim period until such time as a new landfill site had been acquired and developed for receipt of new landfill materials at that site. And then most recently, the board directed staff to suspend further action toward the acquisition of that new landfill site. By the way, that siting processed had resulted in the identification, as you know, of a site identified as Site L. And the board directed staff to suspend that action. After what you have heard this evening that has been presented to you tonight, does this remain your present policy direction? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Obviously we can talk about that tonight -- MR. ILSCHNER: Certainly. Page 32 April 20, 1999 CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- but since it's a workshop, we can't make an official -- MR. ILSCHNER: That's correct, Madam Chairwoman. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- decision to change, because that would -- we need to have public input before we make -- MR. ILSCHNER: That's correct. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- that final decision. Commissioner Constantine? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One of the things we talked about when we said we would suspend further action was that we would suspend that pending a workshop on a landfill in deciding things such as siting and so on, and that hasn't been part of tonight's at all. I've got to preface this just by saying, I get frustrated sometimes when we deal with this issue. And it's not at all at -- or certainly not the majority by the fact that we disagree. We all disagree. Every Tuesday we have issues we don't agree on. The frustration for me comes that Commissioner Norris and I have been dealing with this almost seven years. We've gone through eight commissioners, two county managers, a number of people in public works. I think David Russell's the one steady line through all of this. But we have revisited issues over and over and over. And we've spent in excess of a million dollars in that process. And we still find ourselves on some of these issues not being sure where we're going. So that's what my frustration is, just the time that it's taken, and it seems like we still haven't set a specific direction. I am ecstatic that A, we have acknowledged there's an odor and that there's a problem, because for years we did not get that acknowledgement. And two, that we appear committed to at least making an attempt to address that. I mentioned earlier being skeptical that this is going to be a magic fix, just because we have had in six years five different magic fixes, and none of those have been it yet. I hope this is. But either way, what we looked at tonight was the presentation demonstrates that there are all kinds of alternatives out there, which we get phone calls on and requests all the time, gee, have you looked at this technology or that technology. But I think it also has shown us that none of those are economically viable at this time. That's not a whole lot different than what we ultimately came up with in 1995, or consult your calendar. Furthermore, every technology, even if there were any economically viable, still requires some landfilling. And so the question is still going to boil down -- I'm very happy we're going to try to address this smell problem, because it doesn't matter whether we're there at our existing site till 2004 or 2014, we still have to have that odor taken care of. What I'm wondering from the rest of the board, and I think this is along the same lines of what you're asking there is, when do we plan on addressing the issue of where we're going to be and when? And tonight that wasn't part of our agenda and that's not the format, but that is something we need to do. One of David's early comments is if we stayed -- and that was a good question on your part. If we have higher than three percent per year, we could actually be within our 10-year window two years from now. So -- and it's not just being proactive now. We're getting down to the nitty-gritty where we have to make a decision in the next couple of years. And I'm just wondering, do we have a plan? Do we Page 33 April 20, 1999 want to do that prior to summer vacation, have something in-depth on that? Do we want -- when do we want to schedule that? The sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned. We've all gathered a lot of information on it. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: John? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, as I said before when we had our last little workshop that this topic came up, you don't see the landfill, you don't hear it. The only problem is the odor. The trucks don't go through anybody's neighborhood. If we make this concentrated effort and it's successful in curing the odor problem to everyone's satisfaction -- or I guess you can't ever do that, but to any reasonable person's satisfaction, I should say -- then the question and the issue of whether or where to site another landfill takes on a whole new color. And so I don't think that there's any point in addressing what we're going to do with siting until we're done with knowing the answer to whether we've controlled the odor or not. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me respond to that, because I respectfully disagree in that if we -- we had talked about leaving in 2004. But even if we correct the odor issue, we were told by our staff tonight that it has a life till maybe 2014 at that site. There are a number of issues other than simply odor when we talk about expanding beyond the current boundaries of the existing site. If we go in any direction beyond that, you're getting into homes, you're getting into a number of other issues. And so it's not simply a smell issue. It may be at that site. But even if we decided, and I hope we won't, but even if we decided to stay till 2014, we've still got that window I spoke of that we need to always have some inventory there. And if that 14 becomes 13 or 12 or 11, we're still only two or three years out from having to make that decision. So I don't think there's any benefit to delaying that. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I just want to weigh in on that particular point. I've got more things to say, but I heard 2014 or maybe 2011 if the increase continues. I also heard 2034 if we expanded as -- and I need to know, does that mean if we expand across there on that map, or does that mean the surplus property, if we expand on to the surplus property? MR. ILSCHNER: You're referring to the Burns-McDonnell -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes, sir. MR. ILSCHNER: -- 34 years? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes, sir. MR. ILSCHNER: What that would involve is expanding across the landfill in this direction. This direction as well. Of course, we'd come up against this particular cell here. We would finish up Cell 6. It also involves in the Burns-McDonnell, if you recall, some utilization of this area and this area with some mitigation off-site to replace -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Those wetlands. MR. ILSCHNER: -- the South Florida Water Management District wetlands, protected wetlandso CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Let me just say -- let me just get my answer to this before we go on, and then Commissioner Berry wants to talk, too. But just -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: As part of your answer, though, it also includes a cell elevation-- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Well, that was my question. 170 -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me respond to this, please. Page 34 April 20, 1999 MR. ILSCHNER: Additional elevation, yes. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me respond to this, please. Cell elevation of 170 feet, which would clearly be visible from the interstate. So that goes back to Commissioner Norris' point that, oh, you can't see it. You could then. It also talks about no space for material processing, which that's why I asked the question at the time, you've got to do that somewhere. And frankly, it's not too logical to do that somewhere other than at the site where you're landfilling. It's kind of silly to have facilities-- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Tim, would you let me finish my question? Because my question -- I appreciate that, because one of the things I wanted to know is does this 2034 include that extra 150, 170 feet? Because Mr. Bigelow talked about if you expanded over there, you would need at least a two percent increase in height to get the flow. MR. ILSCHNER: That's for drainage purposes, yes. So you'd looking at about 20 feet at the middle on the existing landfill if you went ahead and completed this whole cell area. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Because what I want to do, Tim, is not just limit my question to that particular plan for expansion on the current site, but if we could do something other than -- whoever that is -- Burns-McDonnell, could we, if we expanded over with just a two percent increase in height, has anyone calculated what the -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, that would be about three feet as opposed to -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: 170 feet. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No, I mean three feet more other than 62 feet more. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Three feet more -- could you let him answer me? How much more time could I get? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How hard is it to figure out what two percent is of 1087 COMMISSIONER CARTER: I would like an answer to Commissioner Mac'Kie's question. THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, one at a time. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Let him answer. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I believe the question is, what happens if? MR. ILSCHNER: I think the answer to that question is, using the current plan, we have stated tonight that you're looking at 16 years, approximately, with the current plan of closure include -- and that would, of course, include expanding over, filling these "V" area in and completing up to this point. COMMISSIONER CARTER: If we took it beyond 16 years as a possibility out to 2034, is that 170 feet or is there a -- MR. ILSCHNER: That's 170 feet. Now, you can do some other things, not all the way up to 170 feet. You could go slightly higher. You could also utilize this area. And you probably gain an additional 10 years or about 25 years of total capacity. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Because that bears directly on the question of if we're getting close to our 10-year capacity, and our only option beyond that requires 150 feet higher, that's one thing. But if we're getting close to our 10-year capacity, unless we expand, what is that, eastward, and then without a significant height increase, I need to know, how much time does that buy us? MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairwoman, I would suggest if you are interested in those kinds of information, allow us to develop that for you and bring back several scenarios for you to consider. Page 35 April 20, 1999 CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I am interested in that. And the rest of the board will tell you. Commissioner and then Commissioner Berry. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I apologize, just one final thing. Just why I point this out on there is that the Burns and McDonnell study I think is misleading at best to the public. The folks who commissioned that had an agenda. But to suggest 2034 as one option there isn't really viable. You're not going to take your materials processing somewhere else. You're not going to get half of your water management district stuff taken away. It's just not a viable -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: And that's why I'm trying to ask the middle question. Not the extreme, but a reasonable middle somewhere between 2011 and 2020, or whatever it turns out to be. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, that's what I want to know, what's the middle possibility? You're still processing at the site. You may have to go up a few feet. You may do some extension. Does that take me to 2025? In that interim period, I'm looking for the whole concept of waste processing that says do I ever have to leave where I am? And I don't know that answer. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Commissioner Berry? MR. ILSCHNER: We can develop that information, Madam Chairwoman, and bring that back to the board. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Commissioner Berry has been extremely patient. Do you remember what you wanted to say? COMMISSIONER BERRY: No, I know exactly what I want to say. I appreciate the presentation tonight. I guess what I was looking for as well, were a little -- were some possible other alternatives. I think the odor -- you know, addressing the odor concern, that's been first and foremost. And I think you have given us a plan. I haven't sat here as long as the rest of -- particularly Tim and John have sat here and listened to, and the rest of you, different things that were going to be done. But I'm willing to give you some more months here to see if we can get this thing straightened out. And that's first and foremost, and I appreciate that. I guess what I'm looking for is something down the road. And I don't think -- I think people in Collier County are kidding themselves if they think that in the future they're going to get away with having one of the lowest disposal rates in the State of Florida. I think it's been real nice, we've all enjoyed the ride, but I think the ride's about over. And I can't imagine that this room is not filled with environmentalists tonight sitting here talking to us about not wanting to go out and dig a hole someplace in Collier County and continue to put garbage in this. All due respect, Steve. I've had this conversation with him, so he knows what I'm going to say. But I think that in the future, I think you better look at some other method. And I think it -- it's going to be expensive. And you're limiting yourself when you say I don't want to spend the money. If you paid attention in Collier County this week, we had another government body that limited the money and they've got themselves in a little bit of a pickle. But at the same time, I think you need to take a look. I had the opportunity to go look at the waste incinerator. That's what I'm going to call it. Maybe there's a more refined name for it. But they burn waste in Lee County. I'm not promoting their particular one, and I'm not saying that we have to duplicate it. But I think we need to think on a grandeur scale of why should every county in Collier County -- or in the State of Florida be isolated in disposal of waste? Page 36 April 20, 1999 And I agree, I know you're going to have to have someplace to take care of the ash. What I'm interested in knowing, that if you joined in with -- on a regional concept in waste disposal, how much land would you need to have for how long a period of time or what -- maybe that's not the right way to ask the question. But I'm looking for the amount of land to dispose of that ash. In other words, based on the tonnage that you put in, how much land is required then to landfill that ash? And the ash that's coming back to me seems a lot less -- I don't know what the word -- it's not as ugly. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Noxious. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Noxious I guess is the word. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No, you're right, that's what Hendry County has done with Lee is they send their waste there and they take the ash back. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, that's -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: That's right. It costs -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- I just think, Tim, that it's something that in the future that Collier County needs to consider. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- a million bucks a year, too. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'm not saying it's the only -- you know, that this is absolutely the way to go, but I have to tell you, if -- how many of you in here have ever been to an incinerator? How many of you have seen the one in Lee County? I don't know how you felt about it, but were you impressed with what you saw up there? How many of you walked in there and walked into where the burners are? And I venture to say to anyone of you sitting in this room, the floor in that incineration room was cleaner than your kitchen floor at home. You could have sat down and almost eaten off of that floor. How many of you were impressed with the technology that you saw up there? How many of you watched the monitor of the smoke stacks of the emission out of that smoke stack? Now, Dr. Stokes, you're much more knowledgeable than I am about this, but when they tell me that the EPA is such and such and this is a fractional amount, I didn't walk around seeing the grass outside that incinerator turning strange colors. And I didn't see anybody acting weird inside that building who are working there on a day-to-day basis. And I will also tell you that when I drove up to the facility, the grounds were manicured beautifully. There was no odor, because of the way the air is drawn in through that building, and that air is used in the incineration of that garbage. You would not have any idea what you were approaching unless someone told you, unless you saw the garbage trucks going in. I mean, it's the most incredible -- I was so much impressed with that. And this is what I think in the future Collier County needs to take a look at this kind of thing. If it means joining with Lee County -- I know we all like to have our little domains, and I think that's fine, as long as you can do it. But if there's a possibility, and I don't know if there's a possibility, but that's the kind of thing that I would like to see us investigate. And at the same time, leave some life at our current landfill so we're not left holding the bag in case we have some kind of a catastrophe in Collier County. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So that would be another -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'd just like to -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- set of statistics that we'd like to see. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'd like to see that. And I'm going to tell Page 37 April 20, 1999 you right up front, is it going to cost more? No doubt about it. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Five times -- four times. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Five times. COMMISSIONER BERRY: But I'm going to tell you, if you're going to live in Collier County and if you're going to live in the State of Florida, the free ride's over with, folks, okay? And I am not going to spend money to go out here and fight with our attorneys, to fight with landowners to take their property from them. I'd rather put that into some other kind of processing than to go out there and do that. Now, that's where I stand at. I will not support going forward to pursue Site L. And frankly, I'm not really interested in supporting any site in Collier County. I think those days are over. And that's why I'm saying, I can't imagine that this room isn't filled with environmentalists tonight saying do not site another site in Collier County. They don't want us to build a house, but they don't care if we site a landfill? I don't understand that. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Commissioner Mac'Kie? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Yes. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I concur with Commissioner Berry, because I had the privilege of going through that incineration operation this afternoon. They're at a point now where they have got a three-year window to make a determination of what they're going to do, because they're just about at capacity. But they could double their own capacity to take care of themselves. They could triple it or quadruple it if we had a regional partnership, if that was the direction to go. And the good news for us is, they don't have a place to take the ash. They're paying Hendry County a million dollars a year to bring their trash in and burn it, so they take back the ash to Hendry. Now, I think we've got some possibilities to say that we have capacity in our own landfill to do that, and would like us to explore that as a possibly to look at. Because I see some windows here with doing some changes in our existing landfill, providing the program you gave us tonight controls the odor problem. If that does that, I see that we might be out to 2020, or '24. And we have an opportunity to explore with Lee on a regional incineration. It may not be the best alternative. Dr. Stokes has talked about waste processing. I want some windows in here to figure all of that out, to find out what we're going to do, and come up with a long-range plan to deal with this. So as Commissioner Constantine and Commissioner Norris have gone through for years and years, that commissioners are not sitting here five, six, seven, eight years from now wrestling with this problem. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do the board -- I think I heard Barb say she doesn't mind this. And I won't speak for her. But does the board not care or really want to explore something that we're told is -- we pay 16 bucks a ton right now. Is 75 or 80 bucks a ton to do? That doesn't scare you away from it at all? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, if those -- if your figures are accurate. But that -- in my discussions, I think there could be a better price than that, Tim. I would at least like to really sit down at the table and talk about it. I mean, that -- yeah, of course, I'm not excited about spending my money disposing of my garbage. But on the other hand, I'm not excited about going out and siting a new landfill down here, either. Because I think we're beyond that. If we can't come up with something better, I think we've got a Page 38 April 20, 1999 serious problem. We've got enough bright peoples around here that we ought to be able to come up with something a little bit better. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, Lee told me today it's $185 average a household. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right. Exactly right. As I said, it's not cheap. I'm not saying that it's cheap, so don't anybody walk out of here tonight thinking that this is going to be inexpensive. I'm not saying that. COMMISSIONER CARTER: But I think Dr. -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: But I think we can do better than that, Jim. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I think Dr. Stokes told us is there -- a cheap disposal is really over. We've got to get realistic and find the best way to do it. And frankly, it's going to cost us more. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Well, it's really over at some point in time when we have reasonably maximized the use of the property that we own as a current landfill. And one of the things -- and I know Tim's going to really hate me for this, but one of the other numbers I'd like to know is expansion onto what is now surplus property. If that were where we were going to, for example, bury the ash in a combo deal with Lee County, how much time would -- I mean, is that the forever solution to our problem? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And how much credibility does that cost this Board of County Commissioners? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: There's a lot of things that matter. COMMISSIONER CARTER: We have to put the ash somewhere, and it's far less of a problem than what we're currently doing, as I understand it. In fact, if you didn't know what was going into a fill somewhere, you probably wouldn't even pay any attention to it. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So have we -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Again, can we set a particular time schedule to do this? Because we're kind of just talking now -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Sure, that's where we're going. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- and conceptual things. And my frustration again is that the hypothetical oh, but there ought to be a better way we've heard since before I was on the board; when I was president of the Golden Gate Civic Association. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Tim, I told you what I'm talking about, the better way, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not looking for that dream thing that's coming down the road. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Cheap. COMMISSIONER BERRY: And cheap. I'm looking for what I have seen and I think has some possibilities. But I think it's going to take sitting down at the table and discussing it. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So Mr. Ilschner -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: How will I know? CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- when might we reasonably expect to get some of these kinds of time projection, some alternatives for our consideration? How soon could you put something together? MR. ILSCHNER: I would feel comfortable in being able to pursue both of the questions you've posed for us: The question of additional life at this landfill under various scenarios, as well as approaching the Lee County counterparts, to discuss the options there. If you could give us 60 days, I think we could do a very good job and bring you back a report at -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Is there a majority of the board who wants to hear -- and there may be -- but who wants to hear all the ins Page 39 April 20, 1999 and outs of expanding the 300 acres to the north that is currently surplus property? COMMISSIONER CARTER: I would like to know -- I'd like to keep that as an option, Commissioner. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: We have to. We have to at least -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm asking if there's a majority of the board. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Okay. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Barbara? COMMISSIONER BERRY: I don't know. I really hadn't considered it. Because I thought we had kind of taken our stand on that. It still is county property. I guess my biggest interest is looking at this other, frankly. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: My ques -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Because I don't want to waste a lot of staff time or effort or discourage the public thinking God, you can't believe these guys about anything if a majority of the board is still standing pat on what we've said since 1993. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Is the board interested in looking at utilizing that property for potential disposal of ash? Which I understand is not a noxious use. That's my question. Not landfilling on that -- MR. ILSCHNER: Madam Chairwoman, I need to point out that ash is brackish in nature, salt. And there is special precautions that you need to take, even at a landfill, when you start to utilize a landfill for that particular ash material. COMMISSIONER BERRY: It's not dry. If you haven't seen this come out of the incinerator, it's not a dry material. But it's not -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Does it have a smell? COMMISSIONER BERRY: No. MR. ILSCHNER: It has no smell. And it can be used for cover on a landfill, for example. But it is brackish. COMMISSIONER BERRY: There is no odor to it. I mean, this was what was amazing to me. First of all, hub caps, car differential, all this is separated out. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Water heaters. COMMISSIONER BERRY: And that's loaded up off of a big conveyor belt and it's dunked and then that's loaded up on a big semi and taken off not to a landfill, but it's taken off to some -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: They sell the metal. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So Barbara, are you or John either one interested in looking at the surplus property for ash disposal? If not, the staff need not be bothered with that. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I don't think it's a legitimate concern until we know the answer, as I said before, on what our odor control measures do. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So it's not closed off completely, but it's not for present study. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It's not something that I want to bother with right now. COMMISSIONER BERRY: To me, it's just not a priority right at this time. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: So since I've told our court reporter that we'd take a break if we weren't almost finished, but we are, it sounds like, winding up. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just a note before we do that, when Page 40 April 20, 1999 you say it's not completely closed off, the property's declared surplus and we've given staff direction on what to do with that surplus, so unless the board takes some formal action -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Of course. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- different than that. So I know your opinion is different, but when you say it's not closed off completely, I don't know that that's an accurate -- unless the board takes some formal action to reverse previous direction, it is closed right now. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Understood. And nothing is happening on the adjacent property right now if we did the transfer. Did we do the transfer to parks and rec., or did we hold that back? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That was pending today. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I think we held that back. So, you know, the question is yet to be -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: And at that time I pulled it off the consent item. I don't want to purchase land in there with parks and rec's funds, I wanted to keep it as one unit until we decide what to do with that. And I still hold that position. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: As do I. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And my point is, the board had decided and there's been no action by this board contrary to what that decision was. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And therefore, the staff should not be doing anything with that property at this time. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Right. And that's -- I understood that. So in 60 days -- in 60 days, we would hope to get a report back about what available options there are within those parameters. And, Mr. Fernandez, would we consider those at a public hearing? Another workshop? I'd just like to tell people sort of what to expect. MR. FERNANDEZ: It's up to the board, the form that you would like to consider this presentation in. If you'd like another forum like this one, we could do it like this one again, or -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Public hearing time. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I think it's time for public hearing. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, you know, Mr. Ilschner raised four points here tonight. And I think we're okay. And the last one he raised about Site L, I'm not willing to go to Site L. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Me neither. That's three. So we're done with Site L -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: -- as soon as we can take a vote. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- we don't take any formal action tonight, so -- CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Okay, 60 days we'll have a regular -- within that reasonable time, we'll have a regular public hearing and we'll make those decisions. MR. ILSCHNER: Yes, Madam Chairwoman, and we will be ready for that public hearing. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Anything further? Mr. Weigel? MR. WEIGEL: One small matter, and that's in regard to Site L. As you know, and I had reported to you and to opposing counsel, Kathleen Passidomo, for the Site L owners, some representatives of which are Page 41 April 20, 1999 here tonight, that we are in a holding pattern on a lawsuit to gain the statutory right of access for investigation of the property with a hearing that would be coming up in late May. I think it might be appropriate at this time, notwithstanding that there's no decision to do anything about Site L in particular, that I may be authorized or exercise my own prosecutorial discretion to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit with, obviously, the potential to file again if the need should arise. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: You'd need to ask us that on Tuesday so we can make that action formally. So would you do that at the next -- be sure that that's on our next agenda. And for tonight we can't take action, so you'll just have to use your prosecutorial discretion at this point. MR. WEIGEL: That's fine. I'll be in contact with Ms. Passidomo in regard to the calendar date next Tuesday. Because I know that they were hoping that I could give them some information after tonight. I think I can give them some information to bring up on Tuesday. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: I hope so. MR. WEIGEL: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN MAC'KIE: Anything further? If not, we're adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 9:25 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CO ROL A . ' I , ATTEST: ,~;~,l. DWIGHT E. BROCK/,~CLERK These minutes approved by the Board on ~~//~/~/~2 , as ! / ' presented / or as corrected Page 42 April 20, 1999 TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 43